Marie @ ShareDirect by Heron MarTech

Building Marketing Technologies

Marie Otto

Marie partners with customers to align technology with their strategies. She's determined to exceed expectations. She listens to and understands customers.

This is my Personalized Engagement Site (eSite) that will allow you to find the latest information and content relevant to your personal needs and interests. Please visit regularly and contact me today so we can help you grow your business!

Email: motto@heronmartech.com | Mobile: 919-602-7300

Updating Your Account Based Marketing (ABM) strategy

Key Trends Shaping ABM in 2025

Over the past 2-3 years I have mentioned the importance of a strong ABM strategy and provided studies, articles and guidelines of how to best implement this strategy. This Demand Gen report updates it with how to best use AI and Hyper-Personalization to optimize current campaigns and recalibrate their processes for long-term success.

Topics covered include:

How to use artificial intelligence (AI) to unlock deeper account insights and fuel personalization at scale;
Why more marketers are leveraging immersive content formats and Connected TV (CTV) to connect with target accounts; and
The importance of cross-functional alignment for creating cohesive account-based experiences and the best metrics for tracking success.

About 50% of marketers are using AI to generate insights into account needs and improve the customer experience. This allows organizations to get and stay ahead of their competition.

“In order to break through the noise and engage top accounts, marketers must deploy hyper personalized campaigns that speak directly to an organization’s challenges and needs. This requires B2B teams to be armed with accurate, robust data and switch their focus from individual leads to engaging the entire buying group.”

Cross functional alignment might include website visits, content downloads, engagement score, cost per engaged account, pipeline velocity, deal size, win rate, and customer lifetime value. All revenue teams should be aligned on the reporting and measurement and the tools used.

This is a short overview and well-worth your time to quickly review and make sure your organization is on the best track. Our Heron Martech technology is well suited to provide the foundation of what is needed to keep up with the latest ABM strategies. Let me know what you think.

Download the Report

Meeting Your Buyers Where They Actually Are.

Matching Your Prospects With the New Reality Buyer Expectations

I've reported on some of the new sales expectations from buyers and much of that has come from Corporate Visions. As you may recall Corporate Visions is one of my favorite organizations because of their scientific processes and their excellent way of creating an 8-10 page overview and a more lengthy E-Book which could be 20-30 pages.

This E-book is well-worth your time and others in your organization. I'll try to offer a quick overview.

Here's the reality: 83 percent of sales leaders say their sellers still struggle to adapt to changing buyer needs and expectations. It's time to give your process a reality check.

Match Your Sales Process to Your Buyer's Journey

Align Opportunity Management with Reality – Build around actual buyer psychology and decision patterns.
Turn Account Plans into Growth Engines- Revenue potential lies in turning those one-time wins into lasting partnerships.
Transform Managers into Revenue Multipliers- Sales managers are the key to turning your process into consistent execution and predictable results.

There is so much in the detail and I've just provided a teaser. I encourage you to take a look at the complete E-book to see if your organization is being as effective as it can be. Let me know if this can make a difference for you.

Download Full Study

Stimulate Revenue, Retention and Growth

Prioritize Customer Engagement for Higher Customer Lifetime Value

I have been preaching the importance of Customer Engagement (CE) for the last 2-3 years and others are now beginning to see the light. Customer Engagement is about building a meaningfully mutually beneficial relationship with each of your customers. But in today’s world we have to think digitally which the research shows is what most customers prefer. This report from Braze provides a good overview of what CE is and the value of building it into your strategy.

They list 6 real benefits beyond pure revenue generation which 0f course the primary result:

Building Brand Loyalty - This is the ultimate reason people buy from you rather than your competitor
Increasing Customer Lifetime Value - Retaining customers and reducing the cost of acquisition
Unlocking Anonymous Users - Encourage them to engage with you
Collecting Zero and First-Party Data - You need the right technology to access this critical component
Encouraging Advocacy - Turn happy customers into advocates
Improving ROI - Invest your budget with activities that you know move the needle

ShareDirect can provide you all of this and much more with a Customer Engagement Platform (CEP) that can stand alone or integrate into other existing platforms you might have in use. Why not take a look to see how this can add an important advantage to reaching your goals.

View Report

Key Customer Retention Strategies That Work!

Steps to See a Noticeable Lift in Customer Retention

This analysis from Braze is an easy-to-read and understand guide to purposeful Customer Retention strategy and execution. I've said for a long time retaining and growing a current customer is far more profitable than acquiring new ones. It's not to say that both efforts should be part of almost any marketing and sales strategy, but so often, it seems like acquisition is more funded and stressed than retention.

I'll report here on the first part of the report of 7 Key Retention Strategies That Work. All of these are important to help retain and grow current customers, B2B or B2C.

Customer Onboarding-Key to retention is the first interaction with your brand.
Asking for Feedback-Helps to express Humility and a positive approach.
Personalization-Using First Party and Zero Party data. It can boost average revenue by 10-30%. 4-ways:
- Messages based on customer interactions
- Use first name where appropriate
- Segmentation to targets
- Create opportunities to interact
Cross Channel Outreach-Communication strategies across multiple channels specific to each segment.
Priming for Permissions-Make a good argument early to enable messaging.
Experimentation-Customer engagement is an on-going effort and testing is an essential part.
Leverage Data to Support Smart Segmentation-Identify segments and engage accordingly.

"Above all, retention requires Brand Humility. In other words, if you want customers to stick around, you have to learn how to communicate with them in ways that feel human. That means taking a closer look at your brand's messaging tone, frequency, content and communication delivery methods. And making sure your customer messaging and experiences are tailored -as much as possible- to the specific needs and habits of each customer."

The key for us and you is ShareDirect covers all 7 of the strategies listed above and is made to empower you to scale One-to-Many as you would One-to-One. Let us know if you would like to see how it could provide you a human and personalized approach to Customer Retention.

View full report

Full Article: 10 Most Promising Customer Engagement Solution Providers for 2022

What They Saw in Heron Martech and our technology, ShareDirect

I mentioned this about a month ago that we were receiving this recognition. It was a complete surprise since we didn’t know it existed and certainly didn’t pursue it.

I think it validates the tag line in our Heron Martech logo: Innovate-Enable-Engage. It is not an award for John, Marie, me or others in the organization. It shows how we built our company and our technology around Personalization and the Human element and placed our focus on our customers and their success.

The effectiveness of ShareDirect goes beyond its features. It lies in the customer-centric approach that the Heron Martech team employs for every new client that uses the tool.

I think the team at CIO Review were really impressed with the scalability of our solution and that led to the recommendation to appear on the front page.

ShareDirect helps their clients market to one-to-many prospects and customers as you would one-to-one.

Hopefully this doesn’t appear too self-centered but we feel it might result in others realizing the opportunity this technology might provide them. Let me know if you have questions or what you think.

Read the full article

Guide to getting started with Account Based Marketing

An excellent guide and blueprint to ABM

We have previously provided you with a foundation for an Account Based Marketing strategy but how do you get started and where can it take you. This "Blueprint" from Terminus is just such a guide. For most companies who are already at varying stages of ABM this might be a good checklist or a primer on what could make your program better.

First they provide a good definition of ABM:

"An end-to-end revenue strategy where marketing, sales and customer success spend the majority of their effort on pre- and post-sales accounts that are best-fit customers. This happens through data-driven targeting, personalized marketing tactics at scale, measuring and continuously optimizing."

Keep in mind that roughly 92% of companies are either implementing, optimizing or fully integrated in the ABM strategy. There is still much room for improvement in most every organization. They provide a good framework for success:

Target the right accounts
Engage across all channels
Activate all teams on the needed information on each account
Measure what matters most

Download the Blueprint

Can you provide your customers "Digital Empathy"

View Document - Novantas Spring 2021 Review

This is a very short read from the Novantas Spring 2021 Review. I believe many in Banking and finance are familiar with this excellent consulting organization and receive their regular reports. I want you to focus on just pages 8 and 9. You can click here to view the document.

The author Sarah Welch, who is a Novantas Director created this excellent piece and I'll give you a brief overview:

Promise of Personalization - "Banks that establish digital empathy with their customers through personalization enjoy the benefits at every stage of the customer lifecycle."
Engagement - Bankers typically try to engage the customer to build an actual relationship with them. In addition to this direct engagement can this be done at scale through digital technology.
Humanizing Your Approach - "To compete in a digital-first world, all banks (and other financial based companies) will have to Humanize their customer interactions to drive deeper, stickier relationships"

View Article

Our ShareDirect technology is directly relevant to helping create the Digital Empathy Sarah Welch describes. Give us a call and we'll show you how.

New Ebook: Digital Solutions to Navigate Healthcare Commerce in 2021

This post is aimed at a particular industry, medical, pharma, healthcare and adjacent segments. It’s very relevant today especially since we may be coming out of the pandemic with a entirely new set of standards and needs. For example personalization and humanizing marketing and general communication is an imperative.

I invite you to read and/or download this ebook from Proficient by clicking here. They organize this into three chapters:

The NOW-The elements considered table stakes for most organizations and how you may look to integrate them within your business.
The NEW-Components that a few companies are executing on today and why they will likely be able to differentiate themselves from the competition.
The NEXT-What’s around the corner that no organization is working towards today but would be at the forefront of innovation if they were.

View Ebook

ABM Benchmark Study Provides Guidance for 2021

I am providing you a remarkable study recently completed by ITSMA and the ABM Leadership Alliance. Account Based Marketing has been around in various forms for the last few years. With the disruptions and changes in our workplace and methodology it is easy to see why enhancing Marketing and Sales collaboration would be essential to survival and growth.

View Study

This study sets the tone from 2020 and provides guidance for 2021. Today I want to highlight the types of ABM and the core principles or goals.

Types of Account Based Marketing: Most successful companies choose one or two of these types.

One-to-One: Marketing to individual accounts
One-to-Few: Marketing with specific Sales teams on clusters of accounts
One-to-Many: Scaling Marketing and Sales to many accounts

Core Principles: What is needed to have a successful ABM effort.

Strategic focus on improving business reputation, relationships and revenue
Tight partnerships and integration with sales (Collaboration)
Tailored and personalized programs and campaigns based on deep customer insight

As we have mentioned before ShareDirect is the premier outbound application for Account Based Marketing. We like to think of it as building Account Based Relationships (ABR). Let me know if I can help you and be on the lookout for the next installment.

Defining ABM

Account-Based Marketing (ABM) is a strategic approach to designing and executing highly-targeted and personalized marketing programs to drive business growth and impact with specific, named accounts.

Trust: A Rare Commodity in Business

The “Why” and “How” to Building Customer Trust

This article appeared in CMS Wire and is written by Jake Athey, titled Business Has a Trust Crisis. What's the solution? Athey provides several great points related to trust in your business, both B2B and B2C:

Trust is a competitive edge. Trust is the second most important brand attribute, Trust has a strong positive correlation with loyalty, engagement and advocacy.
Trust is Primal. What fuels such a belief? The consistency and quality of our interactions with people. When we interact with a brand in person, it's easier to establish that belief.
Trust Is Omnichannel. Everything your brand does must be oriented around cultivating trust. Quality and consistency of content and customer engagement matters.

And he says what I have been saying:

You can't build Trust with a company, organization or entity. We build Trust with people who are in that company or organization. And I contend that we should not ask for Trust but should earn it with our deeds and words.

We talk a lot about building Trust through our technology, ShareDirect. You are communicating through your Trusted Advisors or Subject Matter Experts (SMEs). And you provide help and understanding through Personalized content and a Human approach. ShareDirect is the “How” to building that trust virtually and with scale.

View Article

Building TRUST through HUMAN Interaction

Three featured articles highlighting the connection between personalization and building human relationships

I have three articles from the last couple of weeks all from CMS Wire that have a distinct connection to Personalization and Human interaction as current marketing imperatives. You can click on any of the three but here is a quick summary of each.

There are at least two core points that run through all three of these reports:

The HUMAN element is not to be denied or you are losing ground fast.
The other is TRUST gained by compassion (which is HUMAN), transparency, communication and HUMAN interaction.

I invite to look over these three short articles to see if you can apply any of their advice.

Again, ShareDirect is the only scalable technology that can truly help address these and other current need unmet needs. Let us hear from you.

Personalization Goes Nowhere Without Trust by Sharon Florentine

Personalization Delivers Great Trust
Be Transparent and Open
Data for Value to Customers

View Article

4 Ways to Ensure Brand Trust During Turbulent Times by Janelle Estes

Consistency Is Key
Show Compassion
Keep Lines of Communication Open
Optimize Your Digital Channels

View Article

When Customer Experience Needs a Human vs. a Machine by Allen J. Porter

Automation vs. Human Interaction-Not a Binary Relationship

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Your Solution to the HUMAN Connection

The Human Connection with ShareDirect

I’ve been preaching the need for companies to move beyond just thinking about Personalization (which is very important) to the next step of Humanizing their communications with their customers and prospects. This latest article from CMS Wire provides some context to this evolving story.

Some key points:

75% of customers prefer to interact with a real person.
Customers engage with Humans not companies.
To make your company sound more Human you must first be a Human.
Always try to add a face.

All of this builds the image of company representatives being their trusted advisors. Some of this article is built around the use of social media, primarily LinkedIn, to make that Human connection. But you don’t have to go there as ShareDirect is designed and programmed to be Your Solution to the HUMAN Connection. Give your customers what they need and desire; someone who can engage, help and understand them.

View Article

Building Your Business With More Human Experience

Excellent report with data highlighting the coming trend toward HX over CX

The coming trend toward HX over CX

We have been hearing over the last couple of years about the importance of Customer Experience (CX) over just Customer Service (CS). Now we're taking the next step, Human Experience (HX).

Customer Experience (CX)	Human Experience (HX)
Identifies you Gives reasons to believe and buy More satisfying transaction	Understands you Engagement to improve people's lives More fulfilling life

Now, this study from Globalwebindex and Worldwide Partners takes it another step. This report "From CX to HX: Unleashing the energy of Human-First Experiences (HX) to empower marketing of the future."

Download the Report

The report drills into several verticals: Healthcare, Consumer Packaged Goods and Retail, Travel and Tourism, and Business-to-Business.

Let me know your thoughts on this shift and we can discuss how ShareDirect is built around empowering marketing through Human Experience (HX).

Today and in the foreseeable future HX determines the ultimate brand value.

Decision-Makers Gravitate Toward Brands With Human Connections, Page 30

Human experience can elevate brands from transaction experience to brand culture experience, resulting in stronger trust and better customer relationships.
Helen Lo, Head of Strategic Planning, We Marketing Group, Worldwide Partners, China

Through it all, marketing and sales teams must incorporate a level of selflessness and empathy in their messages and approaches to connect in a human, authentic, and personalized way. As customers navigate life through this crisis, positioning your company as a true partner is critical. Dialing back product promotions and leading with a common understanding of our shared experiences during this time can be invaluable.
Alison Fetterman, Director of Strategy, Godfrey Worldwide Partners, U.S.

Source: Worldwide Partners